Advertising and Fee Arrangements

The Law Society’s Advertising and Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group is continuing to consider and develop regulatory responses to issues relating to advertising, referral fees, and contingency and other fee practices.

- Deadline for submissions is March 20, 2018.
In order to be sent using the online submission form, your submission document must:

be a PDF, DOC or DOCX file

be no bigger than 5 MB

Submissions will be provided to the Advertising and Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group, Professional Regulation Committee and to Convocation and may be reproduced, and/or made publicly available by the Law Society, with attribution.The Law Society reserves the right to redact submissions at its discretion, for reasons including the protection of confidentiality, copyright, and brevity.

If you prefer to send your written input by mail, please mail documents to the following address:

Advertising and Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group
The Law Society of Upper Canada
130 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M5H 2N6

The Working Group’s call for comment on contingency fee reforms follows the approval by Convocation, in December 2017, of the seventh report of the Advertising and Fee Arrangements Issues Working Group, which focuses on plans to regulate contingency fees. The regulatory plans are designed to protect access to justice for the public, while ensuring protection from unscrupulous practices and unreasonable fees. On January 25, 2018, Convocation approved additional recommendations that expand on the recommendations approved in December. The Working Group’s recommendations regarding the regulation of contingency fees, follow an initial call for input in 2017.

On April 27, 2017, the Law Society set a cap on referral fees based on a percentage of the legal fee:15% for the first $50,000 of legal fees and 5% of all legal fees thereafter, to an absolute cap of $25,000.

Lawyers and paralegals are also required to use the following documents:

The nature and volume of advertising for legal services is evolving rapidly, along with the legal services marketplace. The Law Society established the working group, in February 2016, to determine whether by-law and rule amendments may help ensure advertising and fee practices continue to be accurate, transparent and in the public interest.

The Working Group received a great deal of information about these issues, including advertising that may be false or misleading and fees that are not transparent and appear to have an impact on the way in which legal services are being provided, including:

It has received a great deal of information about these issues, including advertising that may be false or misleading and fees that are not transparent and appear to have an impact on the way in which legal services are being provided, such as:

Advertising for legal services with a view to obtaining referral fees

Use of endorsements and awards that are not objectively verifiable

Lack of clarity in “all-in” pricing for legal services

Disproportionate referral fees, both upfront and as a percentage of the result in a contingency fee matter

2011 – 2014 – Concerns about advertising are growing. A specialized Investigations team is established to respond. Complaints grow from 115 to 141 complaints, including those initiated by the Law Society.

2015 – Professional Regulation Committee develops proposed amendments to Rules of Professional Conduct and conducts a
Call for Input.

Nov 2015 - Professional Regulation Committee reviews input and determines further study is required before deciding on advertising and marketing rules.